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Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys

Part One, Section Four

Part Two, Section Two

Summary

Immediately after their wedding in Jamaica, Rochester
and Antoinette spend several weeks in the Windward Islands at a
small estate that belonged to Antoinette's mother, Annette, located
near a town called Massacre. As they travel from Massacre to the
honeymoon, they are caught in a downpour, driving Rochester, Antoinette,
and a half-caste servant named Amelie to take shelter under a mango
tree.

Antoinette recognizes a black woman named Caroline standing outside
a hut on the far side of the road. Ignoring Rochester's protestations,
Antoinette bolts across the street in the rain. He watches her critically
and questions his hasty decision to marry a woman about whom he
knows nothing. Only a month after arriving in Jamaica—three weeks
of which Rochester spends in bed with fever—he finds himself with
a Creole wife.

Antoinette returns to the tree where Rochester waits.
She invites him to join her in her friend Caroline's house, but
he refuses. Finally, the rain stops and the caravan continues on
its way to Antoinette's family estate, called Granbois. Ill at ease
in the strange tropical climate, Rochester concludes that "everything
is too much"—too lush, too green, too fragrant. He reflects on the
financial transaction that precipitated his marriage: the £30,000 that
was unquestioningly paid to him. This money allows Rochester to
be independent of his father and older brother in England and saves
him from financial disgrace.

When they arrive at Granbois, Rochester finds the house
awkward and run-down. Antoinette introduces him to the many servants,
whom she greets with warmth and enthusiasm. Among the servants are
Christophine, Antoinette's old nurse; Baptiste, a dignified man;
and Hilda, Baptiste's perpetually giggling daughter. At his first
sight of Christophine, Rochester feels her distrust.

Antoinette then leads Rochester through the empty, neglected rooms.
He finds a refuge in his private dressing room, which formerly belonged
to Mr. Mason. After viewing Granbois, Rochester drafts a letter
to his father, assuring him that "all is well and has gone according
to [his father's] plan" regarding the marriage transaction.

Analysis

Antoinette's husband remains nameless throughout Wide
Sargasso Sea, but readers of Jane Eyre will
recognize him as one of Brontë's characters, Rochester. Based on
Brontë's hero, the English gentleman narrates almost the entirety
of Part Two, giving voice to his perspective on the marriage with
Antoinette and the events that lead him to lock her inhumanely in
the attic. Rochester's villainous actions, while never condoned,
are at least somewhat explained by his own suffering, confusion,
and feelings of alienation.

Part Two opens with the ominous statement, "So it was
all over." Hardly the words of a giddy newlywed, these first lines
betray Rochester's immediate apprehensions regarding his hasty marriage
to a woman whom he hardly knows. From his perspective, we see the idiosyncrasies
of his Creole bride and the strangeness of the lush and wild tropical
landscape. The trip away from Spanish Town and the honeymoon to
a remote Windward Island reflects a movement away from the more
colonial and "civilized" areas of the Caribbean to a more remote,
pristine area of the West Indies, where nature dominates human affairs
and views. As they move away from Spanish Town, Rochester's privilege
as a white Englishman diminishes; he becomes an alien outsider,
outnumbered by a community that is indifferent and hostile. His
feeling of being watched in this section mirrors Antoinette's own
paranoid fears in Part One. Here, Rochester, too, reads contempt
in the faces of the black servants.

Rochester searches for traces of England in the strange
world around him: he compares the red tropical land to parts of
England, and finds books by Byron and Scott on the bookshelf. He
tries to imagine his wife as a young English girl in an attempt
to comfort himself in his decision to marry her. When Antoinette
hands him a drink of water, Rochester imagines that "looking up
smiling, she might have been any pretty English girl." He already
wonders about the truth of her pure English descent, marveling at
her interactions with the black servants and silently disapproving
of her refusal to assert rank with them. He feels physically uncomfortable
in the hot climate of the Indies: although mostly recovered from
his fever, he still imagines that the green hills are closing in
around him. From the outset of his story, Rochester often feels
antagonized by a natural landscape that he associates with his wife
and her Creole background.

As a small estate passed from mother to daughter, Granbois
represents the Cosway women's inheritance. Significantly, it is
far removed from Spanish Town, the white nexus of power in the West Indies.
More intimately linked with the natural world and the Afro-Caribbean
culture of magic, the Creole women in the Cosway family find their
home on the outskirts of the colonial outposts. Necessarily, Rochester
is an outsider in such a place. Even its very name, Granbois, which
means "great forest," contributes to its atmosphere of isolation
and mystery. As an allusion to Antoinette's recurring forest nightmare,
the name foretells of violence and danger. That Granbois is located
near the ominous-sounding Massacre further enhances its sense of
threat.